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Re: Jane Austen, Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov ...
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Arnie Perlstein¹s interesting comments reveal some of the paradoxes inherent
in language, and especially those that bedevil our honest assessment of
particular quotations from Nabokov¹s diverse writings.
First: what does it mean to claim that there¹s a unique mot juste capable of
conveying a thought¹ with utmost precision?¹ Even allowing the dubious
notion that thoughts,¹ beyond the trite and obvious, exist with measurable,
universally-agreed precision, can writers really judge which of their chosen
words will best convey their meanings to unknown readers (or re-readers) of
unknown cultural and linguistic backgrounds?
The surrounding, persistent myth is that of the Divine King Webster II, who
knows¹ and defines¹ the fixed semantic spread of each word over spacetime,
whereas ever-changing usages, contextual nuances, and idioms is the Great
Dictator.
Arnie seems to be aware of the inherent, inescapable ambiguity of all
natural language. IF we feel that Nabokov is teasing and burlesquing (irony,
humour, sarcasm, hyperbole, ...) we naturally praise the very lack of
precision expressed so precisely. VN¹s real thoughts¹ (we are pre-convinced
that he¹s no misogynist foe of Jane) are beautifully conveyed by statements
to the contrary. In humourless Boolean terms, expressing P as NOT-P is the
epitome of NON-precision!
(In everyday discourse, Irony is ever present. When the student was asked to
provide a sentence using the word marvelous,¹ he offered: When my unmarried
sister announced that she was pregnant, my dad said Marvelous, bleedin¹
marvelous.¹)
However, since we are equally convinced of VN¹s dislike of Freud, Lenin.
Stalin (more ...), we interpet his denigrations as precisely worded and
Irony-Free.
Final point: in his preface to Lectures on Literature, VN praises Mansfield
Park¹s power to provoke an artistic quiver,¹ that sign of a masterpiece
that comes from reading not with the heart, not so much with the brain, but
with the spine.¹ This statement is wonderful proof that word-precision¹ is
very much subjective and, indeed, overrated. At the biological level,
spine,¹ as an integral part of the brain¹s nervous system, is far from
precise to some neuro-cognitive readers. Yet VN also writes of the need to
merge the precision of poetry with the intuition of science!¹ Compare Paul
Dirac¹s question to Oppenheimer when the latter revealed his passion for
Dante:
How can you do both physics and poetry? In physics we try to explain in
simple terms something that nobody knew before. In poetry it is the exact
opposite.¹
(Paul Dirac The Man and His Work, Ed. Peter Goddard, 1998, CUP).
The quirks of Language. I find no contradiction between these two
aphorismatic gems. VN¹s precise poetry vs intuitionist science.¹ And
Dirac¹s precise, simplifying science vs poetry¹s deliberate obfuscation of
the obvious.¹
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 26/12/2010 22:51, "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> ...... SHARP ELVES SOCIETY ...... Jane Austen's Shadow Stories
> <http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/>
>
> http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austen-mark-twain-and-vladi
> mir.html
>
> Saturday, December 25, 2010
> Jane Austen, Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov
> In another online venue, someone quoted Nabokov writing to his friend Edmund
> Wilson,
>
> "I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They
> are in another class. Could never see anything in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,"
>
> and then advising his students to
>
> "form a habit of searching with unflinching patience for the right word, the
> only right word which will convey with the utmost precision the exact shade
> and intensity of thought. In such matters, there are worse teachers than Jane
> Austen."
>
> ...as evidence that Nabokov was not a Janeite and was not extending high
> praise to Jane Austen's writing.
>
> To which I replied as follows:
>
> I take Nabokov's comment to Wilson about Austen as a very sophisticated joke,
> meaning precisely the opposite of what you claim, and here is why.
>
> First, listen for the irony in "I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced [ha, ha!],
> in fact against all women writers. They are in another class." Do you imagine
> that Nabokov was actually prejudiced against all women writers, and would, if
> so, acknowledge such an absurd opinion to his friend, whom he knew to be a
> great admirer of Jane Austen? It is highly unlikely! Which alerts us to dig a
> little deeper, and to investigate whether this is a put-on.
>
> And it happens that such an investigation by a knowledgeable Janeite shows
> that Nabokov was not (to paraphrase John McEnroe) serious! This was an inside
> joke by a sophisticated literary scholar, as Nabokov was, I claim, echoing
> Mark Twain's very famous very negative comment about (not coincidentally)
> Pride and Prejudice:
>
> "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her
> over the skull with her own shin-bone"
>
> Of course Twain's ironic twist was that you don't reread a novel you don't
> like often enough to refer to "every time" you read it! And there are other
> examples of Twain's faux hostility toward Austen's writing as well, which I am
> convinced that Nabokov, the careful scholar and himself master of the literary
> put-on, also recognized.
>
> And, by the way, Twain was not just making a joke in isolation, he himself was
> simultaneously implicitly revealing his own Austenian erudition in his little
> joke. How? As a reader well versed in Pride and Prejudice would recognize,
> Twain was actually paying an additional sly homage to the following very
> famous line in Pride and Prejudice itself, when Elizabeth Bennet betrays her
> own attraction to Darcy during her rejection of his first marriage proposal:
>
> "From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my
> acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of
> your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of
> others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which
> succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you
> a month before I felt that you were the
> last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
>
> The "tell" is that within a month after meeting Darcy, and long before he
> proposed to her, Elizabeth was actually weighing the pros and cons of marrying
> him! (and isn't that just plain spectacular dialog-writing anyway?)
>
> So we have Nabokov creating a very elegant little Chinese Box of nested veiled
> allusions, all based on the theme of overtly stated dislike betrayed by
> unconscious revelation of unconscious attraction.
>
> But as far as I can tell, Wilson did not get the joke. Nabokov was playfully
> responding to Wilson's earnest exhortation to Nabokov: "Jane Austen is worth
> reading all through--even her fragments are remarkable". And here is Wilson's
> reply to Nabokov's (mock) dissing of Jane Austen and all female writers: "You
> are mistaken about Jane Austen. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park..."
> That's when Nabokov _pretended_ to capitulate and read Mansfield Park, when I
> would bet the house that he
> had read all of Austen long before.
>
> And anyway, that latter quote you found, which I was not previously aware
> of--for which I thank you---about finding the right word--is totally in synch
> with the argument I just made. Coming from a pedantically precise writer like
> Nabokov, the "only" right word, the "utmost" precision, the "exact" shade,
> these are genuine accolades.
>
> This is not damning with faint praise, this is high praise burlesquing as
> faint praise by the ironic reference to there being "worse teachers than Jane
> Austen". Nabokov was clearly a writer who, even in his nonfiction, was very
> concerned with achieving subtle ironic effects--and that is most of all why I
> believed he was a passionate Janeite, because I believe his deep study of
> Austen's writing only enhanced that quality in his own, and Austen was indeed
> a _great_ teacher for him....
>
> Cheers, ARNIE
> Posted by Arnie Perlstein at 9:53 AM
> <http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austen-mark-twain-and-vlad
> imir.html>
>
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in language, and especially those that bedevil our honest assessment of
particular quotations from Nabokov¹s diverse writings.
First: what does it mean to claim that there¹s a unique mot juste capable of
conveying a thought¹ with utmost precision?¹ Even allowing the dubious
notion that thoughts,¹ beyond the trite and obvious, exist with measurable,
universally-agreed precision, can writers really judge which of their chosen
words will best convey their meanings to unknown readers (or re-readers) of
unknown cultural and linguistic backgrounds?
The surrounding, persistent myth is that of the Divine King Webster II, who
knows¹ and defines¹ the fixed semantic spread of each word over spacetime,
whereas ever-changing usages, contextual nuances, and idioms is the Great
Dictator.
Arnie seems to be aware of the inherent, inescapable ambiguity of all
natural language. IF we feel that Nabokov is teasing and burlesquing (irony,
humour, sarcasm, hyperbole, ...) we naturally praise the very lack of
precision expressed so precisely. VN¹s real thoughts¹ (we are pre-convinced
that he¹s no misogynist foe of Jane) are beautifully conveyed by statements
to the contrary. In humourless Boolean terms, expressing P as NOT-P is the
epitome of NON-precision!
(In everyday discourse, Irony is ever present. When the student was asked to
provide a sentence using the word marvelous,¹ he offered: When my unmarried
sister announced that she was pregnant, my dad said Marvelous, bleedin¹
marvelous.¹)
However, since we are equally convinced of VN¹s dislike of Freud, Lenin.
Stalin (more ...), we interpet his denigrations as precisely worded and
Irony-Free.
Final point: in his preface to Lectures on Literature, VN praises Mansfield
Park¹s power to provoke an artistic quiver,¹ that sign of a masterpiece
that comes from reading not with the heart, not so much with the brain, but
with the spine.¹ This statement is wonderful proof that word-precision¹ is
very much subjective and, indeed, overrated. At the biological level,
spine,¹ as an integral part of the brain¹s nervous system, is far from
precise to some neuro-cognitive readers. Yet VN also writes of the need to
merge the precision of poetry with the intuition of science!¹ Compare Paul
Dirac¹s question to Oppenheimer when the latter revealed his passion for
Dante:
How can you do both physics and poetry? In physics we try to explain in
simple terms something that nobody knew before. In poetry it is the exact
opposite.¹
(Paul Dirac The Man and His Work, Ed. Peter Goddard, 1998, CUP).
The quirks of Language. I find no contradiction between these two
aphorismatic gems. VN¹s precise poetry vs intuitionist science.¹ And
Dirac¹s precise, simplifying science vs poetry¹s deliberate obfuscation of
the obvious.¹
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 26/12/2010 22:51, "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> ...... SHARP ELVES SOCIETY ...... Jane Austen's Shadow Stories
> <http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/>
>
> http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austen-mark-twain-and-vladi
> mir.html
>
> Saturday, December 25, 2010
> Jane Austen, Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov
> In another online venue, someone quoted Nabokov writing to his friend Edmund
> Wilson,
>
> "I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They
> are in another class. Could never see anything in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,"
>
> and then advising his students to
>
> "form a habit of searching with unflinching patience for the right word, the
> only right word which will convey with the utmost precision the exact shade
> and intensity of thought. In such matters, there are worse teachers than Jane
> Austen."
>
> ...as evidence that Nabokov was not a Janeite and was not extending high
> praise to Jane Austen's writing.
>
> To which I replied as follows:
>
> I take Nabokov's comment to Wilson about Austen as a very sophisticated joke,
> meaning precisely the opposite of what you claim, and here is why.
>
> First, listen for the irony in "I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced [ha, ha!],
> in fact against all women writers. They are in another class." Do you imagine
> that Nabokov was actually prejudiced against all women writers, and would, if
> so, acknowledge such an absurd opinion to his friend, whom he knew to be a
> great admirer of Jane Austen? It is highly unlikely! Which alerts us to dig a
> little deeper, and to investigate whether this is a put-on.
>
> And it happens that such an investigation by a knowledgeable Janeite shows
> that Nabokov was not (to paraphrase John McEnroe) serious! This was an inside
> joke by a sophisticated literary scholar, as Nabokov was, I claim, echoing
> Mark Twain's very famous very negative comment about (not coincidentally)
> Pride and Prejudice:
>
> "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her
> over the skull with her own shin-bone"
>
> Of course Twain's ironic twist was that you don't reread a novel you don't
> like often enough to refer to "every time" you read it! And there are other
> examples of Twain's faux hostility toward Austen's writing as well, which I am
> convinced that Nabokov, the careful scholar and himself master of the literary
> put-on, also recognized.
>
> And, by the way, Twain was not just making a joke in isolation, he himself was
> simultaneously implicitly revealing his own Austenian erudition in his little
> joke. How? As a reader well versed in Pride and Prejudice would recognize,
> Twain was actually paying an additional sly homage to the following very
> famous line in Pride and Prejudice itself, when Elizabeth Bennet betrays her
> own attraction to Darcy during her rejection of his first marriage proposal:
>
> "From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my
> acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of
> your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of
> others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which
> succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you
> a month before I felt that you were the
> last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
>
> The "tell" is that within a month after meeting Darcy, and long before he
> proposed to her, Elizabeth was actually weighing the pros and cons of marrying
> him! (and isn't that just plain spectacular dialog-writing anyway?)
>
> So we have Nabokov creating a very elegant little Chinese Box of nested veiled
> allusions, all based on the theme of overtly stated dislike betrayed by
> unconscious revelation of unconscious attraction.
>
> But as far as I can tell, Wilson did not get the joke. Nabokov was playfully
> responding to Wilson's earnest exhortation to Nabokov: "Jane Austen is worth
> reading all through--even her fragments are remarkable". And here is Wilson's
> reply to Nabokov's (mock) dissing of Jane Austen and all female writers: "You
> are mistaken about Jane Austen. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park..."
> That's when Nabokov _pretended_ to capitulate and read Mansfield Park, when I
> would bet the house that he
> had read all of Austen long before.
>
> And anyway, that latter quote you found, which I was not previously aware
> of--for which I thank you---about finding the right word--is totally in synch
> with the argument I just made. Coming from a pedantically precise writer like
> Nabokov, the "only" right word, the "utmost" precision, the "exact" shade,
> these are genuine accolades.
>
> This is not damning with faint praise, this is high praise burlesquing as
> faint praise by the ironic reference to there being "worse teachers than Jane
> Austen". Nabokov was clearly a writer who, even in his nonfiction, was very
> concerned with achieving subtle ironic effects--and that is most of all why I
> believed he was a passionate Janeite, because I believe his deep study of
> Austen's writing only enhanced that quality in his own, and Austen was indeed
> a _great_ teacher for him....
>
> Cheers, ARNIE
> Posted by Arnie Perlstein at 9:53 AM
> <http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austen-mark-twain-and-vlad
> imir.html>
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/